XXXII
Ina tumult of feeling deeper and more complex than ever, Diane made her way through a meadow that furnished a short cut to her own door. She was vaguely aware that the grass was long, and that she was getting drenched nearly to her knees, when she saw, in a half-conscious way, a cluster of asters blooming happily just at the spot where a lowered fence-rail made it possible for her to scramble into the end of her father’s garden.
She was scarcely conscious of what she did, and she had a new feeling of guilt. Until now she had felt that she was as supremely in the right as Faunce was supremely in the wrong; but the whole attitude of her mind was breaking down. She felt a tremor of fear, though even at that moment she could not have told what it was she feared.
Shaken as she was, she tried to let herself in without attracting attention, for she had as little courage as ever for an interview with the judge. However, she was not to escape. He heard the rear door open, and, looking out of his library, espied her at the foot of the stairs.
“Is that you, my child?” he said in the deepbass that always presaged something important. “Come in here a moment before you go up-stairs. I have something to tell you.”
She turned reluctantly and followed him into the old room, which was so full of memories that it made her shiver. Her father resumed his seat by the table, but she remained standing just inside the door, where a bit of sunshine from the window touched the edge of her wet skirt, but left her face in shadow. The judge mounted his spectacles and looked over some papers, refreshing his memory.
“My dear, of course we’ll employ counsel; you know that! I’ve just got a letter from Holt and Hickson, which seems satisfactory on the whole. Mr. Hickson—he’s the junior partner—advises us to wait until the expedition sails. He’s seen Faunce, and, as far as he can ascertain, there’ll be no opposition. Faunce has modified his first assurance to me a little, but I suppose we’ll have to expect that—to expect changes and vacillations in a man like him!”
Diane tried to steady her voice.
“What did he say—I mean, what does he say now, papa?”
The judge consulted the letter again.
“He told Hickson that it depended upon you. He has the greatest faith in you, and won’t oppose divorce if you ask it; but he wants you to ask it in writing. It’s absurd—knowing, as he does,that you’ve left him; but he seems determined, so Hickson says, to know just what you want. Of course, if that is really all he wants to know, it’s easy. You can make a statement here; I’ll have it typed and witnessed, and Hickson can let him see it.”
“And if I didn’t want to write anything, what would happen then?”
Her father looked up in amazement.
“Not want to write anything? Of course you do! The sooner you’re free of that—that coward the better. That’s what I called you in for. You can decide just what you want to say, and I’ll have it prepared for your signature.”
She lifted her head at that, looking at him, a singular expression on her face.
“But that’s just it. I—I can’t! You see, I don’t know what I want to say at all.”
Her father suppressed an exclamation of impatience.
“I should think you’d know well enough! You’ve got to say something, or else let it go, and after a while he’ll sue you for desertion; but no one knows how long it would take him to get his courage screwed up to that. I wish”—the judge let his hand fall heavily on the papers before him—“I wish we had a clean case against him to sue on at once.”
“You mean—we haven’t any case?”
He frowned.
“We’ve got case enough, in one way; but against you—well, he’s done nothing against you but to dare to marry you, knowing what a coward he was!”
Diane continued to look at him, her eyes dilating a little, but she was silent. The judge, aware of it, looked up and encountered her expression. He pulled off his spectacles and gazed at her steadily.
“What’s the matter, Di? You look ill—I’ll have to send for Gerry.”
“Oh, no! It’s nothing but the scent of those tuberoses on the table—it’s so strong, it makes me feel faint.”
She moved away as she spoke and put herself a little out of the range of his vision. The judge took the glass of tuberoses and set it on the window-ledge.
“I thought you had a craze for all kinds of weeds. This thing has been too much for you; that’s what’s the matter.”
“No, no!” she gasped weakly. “I’m strong enough to stand a great deal more than this. I——” She hesitated, beginning to walk about on the other side of the room, her figure outlined against the rich bookbindings, but her face still in shadow. “Papa, what would you say if I—if I decided to go back to my husband?”
There was a sharp little pause before the judge’s bass boomed across the table.
“I’d disown you! A woman that could go back to such a coward wouldn’t deserve recognition.”
She laughed hysterically.
“But I married him!”
“You didn’t know it, did you?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“Nor did I!” The judge controlled his anger. “I beg your pardon, Di, for my share in it. Gerry thinks I helped make the match. If I did, I’ll help unmake it. I’ll have a statement drawn up for you, and you’ll only need to sign it. I should hate to feel the marriage was my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault—unless it’s mine. I—I had no right to think I loved him if—if I didn’t!”
“You didn’t—that’s it, my child. Mistakes like that make half the marriages. I’ve seen enough of it in my day, and I don’t mean to have your life ruined at the start. You’re getting hysterical, that’s all. I’ll see that you get out of it and have a chance to make your life over. You can trust me for that, my girl!”
“But if—if I shouldn’t feel that I wanted to—to have you do it, papa?”
He turned sharply.
“What’s the matter? Have you seen that fellow?”
“My husband? Oh, no, no!” Her face flushed painfully. “I don’t believe he wants to see me after the way I left him.”
The judge started to retort, but hesitated andreflected. He had been on the point of telling her that Faunce did want to see her, but he thought better of it.
“It was enough to cure him—I’ll admit that, my dear,” he finally replied.
Diane moved to the nearest cabinet, and lifting a little jar of ancient pottery, began to examine it as if she had never seen it before.
“Do you think that any one—that any woman who’s been through what I’ve been through can start over again!”
“Of course she can! Why not? A man can fail and fall, for that matter, and then get up and start fresh.”
“Oh, but that’s different; the man’s not the question. I’m a woman. It’s not the same thing at all!”
“You’re getting back now to the fundamental question—the double standard of morals. It’s not relevant. You’re not doing anything immoral to refuse to live with a coward.”
“I didn’t even stop to think!” she cried. “When he told me what he’d done, I”—she shuddered—“I couldn’t stay!”
“Of course you couldn’t! What’s more, I won’t let you go back to him. You understand that, Di? You’re nervous and broken down, and he may try to persuade you, but I’ll never let you go back!”
“But if—if I went, papa?”
He struck his hand down on the table.
“Understand me. If you went I’d never speak to you again as long as I lived! Don’t you see what he did? He wasn’t only a coward; he would have been Overton’s murderer if the English party hadn’t come along. It was a miracle that saved Overton; Faunce as good as left him purposely to die.”
“Yet”—she spoke with an effort—“yet Overton doesn’t blame him as you do. He tries to excuse him.”
“You’ve seen Overton?”
“Ye-es; just now. I met him on the way home,” she stammered.
A look of relief softened the judge’s face. He rose from his chair and, crossing the room, took his daughter in his arms.
“My child, you’re half sick! You’ve worried too much. Don’t talk in this way again. You know you long to be free.”
His softened tone disarmed her again. She clung to him, trembling, tears in her eyes.
“Oh, I do—I do!” she sobbed. “I long to be my old self again!”
The judge gathered her up in his arms, as he had often gathered her up as a child, and carried her up-stairs to her room. He put her on the lounge and covered her up; then he went down, and sent the old maid servant up with a cup of hot tea. It was the only thing he could think ofthat seemed to fill the peculiar demands of a case like this—a case which, to his mind, was nothing but hysteria. Then he set himself to framing the reply to Faunce that Diane was to sign.
He had made up his mind to settle her affairs for her. He was convinced now that she loved Overton. Sternly as he might have viewed such a case where others were involved, he could see only one side of it for his own daughter—her right, the inalienable right of youth and love, to happiness. He did not permit the finer and more ethical questions to disturb his fixed determination to wrest her from the craven who had been capable of a crime as near to murder as anything short of actual killing could be. Indeed, to his own stalwart mind, it was even worse than murder.
Meanwhile Diane, up-stairs in her own room, drank the hot tea, and permitted the maid to help her with some dry clothing; but she was still shaking like a person who had been suddenly smitten with ague. All the while she seemed to see, through a mist shot with golden rain-drops, the face of Overton, transfigured with his love for her. She wrung her hands together and hid her face in them, oblivious of the pitying eyes of the old servant who had come to take away the tea-things.
She was still sitting there, with her head in her hands, when she heard her father leave thelibrary and go out, and knew herself to be alone in the house. She breathed more freely when she was not in immediate danger of being rushed into some new and terrible decision—a decision that might make her as wretched as that other one which had led to her marriage. She rose weakly from the lounge and went down-stairs.
It was now late afternoon, and the sun had come out with extraordinary splendor. It was flooding the western windows and dappling the lawn with a lovely lacework of rain-gemmed cobwebs that sparkled like frosted fairy veils.
Diane went slowly across the hall, and saw the evening mail lying on the little table in the corner. It recalled with a sharp pang the days long ago when she had looked there in vain for a letter from Overton, then on his way to the south pole. There were some letters there now, however, and she turned them over and started violently when she recognized her husband’s handwriting on an envelope addressed to her.
For a moment she leaned forward, her hands on the table, unable to make up her mind to open it. The aversion she had felt at his confession swept back over her in wave on wave of futile passion and shame. Then she took up the letter and, opening it, moved to the window to read more clearly the few lines that he had written in an unsteady hand:
Your father told me you wanted a divorce, Diane, and now his lawyers insist upon it; but it’s hard for me to believe it of you. I know how you felt when you left me, but now—I’ve done nothing against you, and I trusted you to help me to do better things. I ask you to come back, I entreat you to come; but I’ll never try to force you. I have told them that you must answer me yourself. If you don’t, I shall refuse to let it go on, for I love you still. I will not take an answer from any one but you. If you still ask it, I will set you free. But even then I shall love you.
Your father told me you wanted a divorce, Diane, and now his lawyers insist upon it; but it’s hard for me to believe it of you. I know how you felt when you left me, but now—I’ve done nothing against you, and I trusted you to help me to do better things. I ask you to come back, I entreat you to come; but I’ll never try to force you. I have told them that you must answer me yourself. If you don’t, I shall refuse to let it go on, for I love you still. I will not take an answer from any one but you. If you still ask it, I will set you free. But even then I shall love you.
The letter fell from Diane’s hand and fluttered to the floor. She could see him as he had looked that night in the cottage; she could hear his voice making the confession. The letter was like him. It seemed to fall short; it had not even the courage of his love; and yet she knew he loved her. His very weakness in this hour, when he so needed strength, touched her woman’s heart. Her abhorrence of his deed had clouded her own perception of his misery, but now, in a flash, she saw it. It was as great as hers.
She was still standing there, her head bowed, when she heard steps on the piazza and her father’s latch-key in the door. He came in, bringing with him a young man whom Diane recognized as the village notary. She stooped quickly, picked up her husband’s letter, and stood, holding it behind her, as they entered.
The judge looked at her gravely, unable to discern her expression as she stood with her back to the light.
“That paper’s ready, Diane,” he said briefly,“and Mr. Mackay’s come with me to witness it. All we need now, my dear, is your signature.”
Diane turned and acknowledged the young man’s bow with a deep blush. She felt that all the world now knew of her flight from her husband.
The judge went to the library door and opened it, young Mackay waiting at a respectful distance. Diane did not move, and her father looked around.
“Are you ready, my child?” he demanded sharply.
She hesitated an instant, and then turned and followed him into the room.
He went to his table and spread out a type-written sheet, dipping his pen in the ink, and holding it ready in one hand, as he pulled out a chair for Diane with the other.
“Read that, my dear,” he said briefly, “and then sign here.”
His daughter came slowly over to the table and sank into the chair he offered, drawing the paper toward her. The powerful sunshine in the room seemed to flood the document with light, and she could read it at a glance. It was a brief reply to her husband’s demands and a plain statement of her determination to sue for divorce at once.
She read it, aware of the impatient hand at her elbow clenching the pen, and of young Mackay opposite. From the time when she read her husband’sletter until now she had acted mechanically, scarcely conscious of what was going on around her; and she was only half aware of the curiosity and concern in young Mackay’s eyes. She read the paper slowly through, and then, drawing a long breath, she took the pen from her father’s hand.
He spoke sharply to the witness:
“Come over here and see her sign it, John!”
The notary obeyed, and they both stood waiting, their eyes on Diane; but she did not sign the paper. She rose suddenly, turning a white face toward her father.
“I—I’m sorry, papa, but I really can’t sign it!”
As she spoke she looked up, encountered the amazement and fury and repudiation in his eyes, and swayed under it—but only for a moment. She steadied herself, and, turning back again with a gesture of finality, laid the pen down on the table.